MUTABILITY. WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly—yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost for ever: Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings We rest. A dream has power to poison sleep; It is the same!-For, be it joy or sorrow, THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOWLEDGE, NOR WISDOM, IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER THOU GOEST. Ecclesiastes. THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light, Is the flame of life so fickle and wan That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. O man! hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, And the billows of cloud that around thee roll Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny. This world is the nurse of all we know, The secret things of the grave are there, Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? Who lifteth the veil of what is to come? Who painteth the shadows that are beneath The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb? Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be With the fears and the love for that which we see? A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD, LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Thou too, aerial Pile! whose pinnacles Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres: Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild And terrorless as this serenest night: Here could I hope, like some enquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight ΤΟ WORDSWORTH, 1 POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know It is probable that students have often compared this lament over Wordsworth's defection from the republican cause with Robert Browning's admirable dramatic treatment of that defection in The Lost Leader; and much controversy has from time to time had place as to whether that fine poem really did refer to Wordsworth. Browning's name must ever stand in honourable connexion with that of Shelley (mentioned, indeed, in The Lost Leader); and, even if this sonnet be not among the origines of Browning's lyric, it is fitting to note here the recent publication, in Wordsworth's prose works (vol. I, p. xxxvii), of a letter from the living poet avowing that his composition was based (only based) on the character of Wordsworth. FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE. I HATED thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, Than force or fraud: old Custom, legal Crime, SUPERSTITION.2 THOU taintest all thou lookest upon! The stars, The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea, 1 I leave the heretical grammar undisturbed. Mr. Rossetti substitutes like thee should for like thou shouldst. 2 These lines are from the sixth section of Queen Mab, privately printed by Shelley in the year 1813, and, as he stated in his preface to Alastor &c., Converging, thou didst bend, and called it |